India Politics

India can only be governed and kept together by the persuasive use of authority and not by force. Both the BJP and the AAP need to keep this in mind: It's dangerous to play with history; it's still more dangerous not to learn from it. Only a system that seeks to reconcile the often competing demands and aspirations of its millions can work.

Since independence, Pakistanis have been told that their country is a "citadel of Islam," that its destiny is to be an Islamic state and its army is "the sword of Islam." Advocates of modern, secular values, even pluralism, are denigrated as "enemies of the ideology of Pakistan." Pakistan's establishment, led by its military, also seeks parity with India, not only in the legal sense of sovereign equality between nations but in military and political terms. This ideological milieu has helped religious-political groups exercise greater influence on national discourse than is justified and led to the outgrowth of jihadi groups, one more extreme than the other.

Addressing inequality shouldn't be about penalizing the rich. It shouldn't be about reviving discredited socialist economic ideas from the 1970s in 21st century European think tanks. It should be about fixing the policies and practices that cause inequality.

A new benchmark called the Empowerment Line, developed by the McKinsey Global Institute, aims to create a new and more holistic policy framework for poverty reduction. It calculates the cost for an Indian household to attain the basics and then compares these benchmarks to actual consumption data to measure needs that are going unmet. The results debunk a number of misconceptions about the nature of poverty in India.

Every Independence Day, the Indian prime minister highlights the need for more electricity and reduction in losses. Despite his promises, energy woes are strangulating the country. Manmohan Singh perhaps forgets that his obsession with power was precisely what won him power in 2009.

India's new-media savvy minister Shashi Tharoor has tweeted up a domestic political tempest in a country where sensitivities are ever on a hair-trigger alert for any sign of religious or class offense.